Review of LesDiy Medieval Dutch Windmill Building Block Set MOC-58912

Hey guys! What's up and hope you are all doing well. Sorry I haven't posted recently, have been busy with some MOCs that I hope to show you soon.

Speaking of MOCs, today we are going to look at a cool looking medieval themed set, the Dutch Windmill Building Block set, from LesDiy.com. The set number is Mocsage MOC-58912.

The windmill set is a MOC designed by PeetersKevin. It has 2296 pieces. The windmill consists of a round masonry tower mill with a small cottage attached to it. It sits in a small rectangular plot that is covered with natural vegetation and a large colourful tree. I think it has a very rustic look and the colour scheme with the predominately dark red roof and windmill looks nicely contrasted to the unique grey brick walls.

Apparently the designer Peeters Kevin wanted to use some mini figure capes he had, and thought that they would make good windmill vanes. The round masonry tower is definitely eye-catching, so I hope my pictures of the set do it justice.

As always, I'll show you the contents of the building block set, put it together and provide my honest opinions about the set.

Today's blog post is brought to you by our newest partner LesDiy.com. They are a leader in providing very unique and specially authorised MOC sets just like this Medieval Dutch Windmill. Thanks so much to LesDiy.com for providing this awesome set for today's review!

You can find this set and many more on the LesDiy.com website.

Special notice: If you are ordering anything from the website LesDiy.de, you can use my special code itsnotlego20 to save an extra 20% off (does not apply to LesDiy.com at the moment, sorry!).

The Unboxing

The Medieval Dutch Windmill that LesDiy.com sent me came in this colourful box.

Even the back of the colourful box shows you all the features of this rustic windmill.

Boxes within boxes! I found two boxes labelled A and B inside.

Inside box A, I found the instruction manual, 3 large bags numbered 1, 2 and 3 and a small bag of dark red capes. There looks to be several more bags of parts inside the large numbered bags.

Here's the contents of box B, numbered bags from 4 thru 7 with plenty more smaller bags inside those.

When I opened the instruction manual I found this small sticker sheet (shown with the capes for scale). They look to be stickers for the little cottage, is my guess.

The instruction book has over a hundred pages, but the paper quality isn't as good as some of the manuals from other building block sets, however my first impression is that there are a lot of helpful tips throughout the manual as seen above and below. The manual is divided up into sections that corresponds to the numbers found on the parts bags. So there will be seven steps used in the construction of the windmill.

Something that you don't find in too many non Lego building block sets is a parts inventory page, but this set has it.

Step 1

Here's the contents of big bag #1. There are five smaller parts bags, some baseplates and a brick separator tool. It's thoughtful of them to package the tool right in bag 1, so you can use it right away if required.

These are all of the parts liberated from the bags that will be used in step 1. Let's go!

And here's what we've built from all the pieces in step 1. We've got the base with some foundational bricks and some landscaping. So far, so good, on to step 2.

Step 2.

Another five small bags for step 2.

Here are all the parts for step 2.

In step 2, we start building the round tower with the stone walls. You have to pay special attention because they are a lot of staggered offset placements of bricks. I ended up having to improvise because you need to make sure that the wall levels are even at some point.

Step 3.

Moving on to step 3 we find another 5 bags of parts. Looks like we will be building the remainder of the stone tower in this step.

Just want to say that lots of the parts are composed of 1x1 and 1x2 pieces and SNOT (studs not on top) bricks.

In step3, we have continued building the tower mill and have also started building the small house/cottage.

Step 4.

Looks like there's some consistency because in each larger bag there are another 5 small bags of parts. As the case in step 4.

Here all all the contents of all the parts for step 4.

Upon completion of step 4, I suddenly realize that the cottage is really really small. The interior is unfinished. Hmm, should I call it a shed instead of a house?

Step 5.

Cracking open big bag 5, we find, yup, another 5 bags of parts.

Here are the parts to begin step 5.

Finally, we see the windmill and shed, I mean, house starting to take shape! In this step, we have finished the cottage, added the roof and put it on it's foundation. Some extra landscaping has been added as well. Check out the smoke coming out from the chimney. It's actually made from a snake part, how cool.

The cabin has a non functioning door with a lamp next to it. The porch and railing are pretty rickety, sorry my bad on the construction of it.

Step 6.

Step 6 and it's 5 bags.

Hmm, a flesh coloured wagon wheel inside of all the pieces for step 6.

So all of the windmill roof tiles are clipped to three wagon wheels that are pinned to the center shaft. Very ingenious, but tricky to get each level lined up properly. The masonry stone wall tower is very sturdy but the roof is more delicate to the touch.

A different view of the windmill. The windmill sails or vanes will be attached to the technic pin protruding out from the roof.

Step 7.

What? In step 7, we only get 4 bags of parts, not 5! Anyone keeping track of how many parts bags we have altogether? I count 34 parts bags, not counting the big bags.

Looks like we will top off the windmill roof and make a nice looking tree in step 7.

Oh and almost forgot the windmill vanes. So I thought that these capes would be made out of fabric, but they are just cape-shaped pieces of cardboard. Might be a deviation from the original design.

Check out those neon mushrooms! PSA, don't eat anything that glows, it's probably toxic.

Must be fall colour season! Since this set doesn't come with any mini figures, I added my own so you can get a sense of scale. What do you think of the size of this model?

If we had a drone, this is how the dutch windmill would look from above.

Sorry, still nothing to see here folks. Also, the inside of the stone tower is just bracing so there's no interior there either.

Final Thoughts

So I built this 2296 piece set over the course of two days, probably a total of 12 hours of effort.

Here's a handful of parts that were leftover, some of the brown bits were supposed to be put on the tree, but I kind of free-styled it so I didn't use all the parts.

Another part of the set I had to improvise was during the building of the tower masonry walls. It was very detailed and tricky to put together because of all the 1x1 bits, but once the walls were secured, it was rock solid. The base on which the windmill sits is solid too, so no worries about moving the set around.

Overall, I love the look of the windmill, because it's quite a unique build. I wish the building was a tad larger but I understand why the designer chose the scale, so that it would work with the capes as vanes.

On the plus side, because of the smaller footprint, the windmill will not take up too much space on your shelf or desk. It's primarily a display piece and not a play set due to the lack of interiors and minifigures.

Here's the Dutch Windmill set pictured with another one of my Medieval themed buildings. Do you think they look ok, displayed next to each other?

Although the set came with a sticker sheet, I didn't feel the need to use them. Brick quality and clutch were decent, which was fortunate due to the high number of small parts.

My biggest gripe is how the colours in the manual were depicted. It was really hard to differentiate the red brown parts from the dark brown parts. The dark red parts were displayed as brown. And the orange branches on the tree were shown to be dark brown in the manual. Definitely the colour renditions could be improved.

My rating for this set is a solid 3.8. out of 5. I definitely agree with the age rating of 14+ for this set.

If you made it all the way here to the end of my blog post, thanks so much!!! As a bonus, here's a few more pics for your viewing pleasure, before you go.